by Chad Morgan
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
Lisa stopped her hammering and turned to Daniel. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had a soda? There’re no cigarettes, but they have caffeine and I want it!”
Daniel rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Keep banging on that thing and you’ll tell everything out there where we are. Besides, there’s no power, they’re probably piss warm.”
Lisa looked crestfallen. Daniel rolled his eyes to the ceiling and headed to the counter to the other side of the cash register. He wasn’t even sure it would open without power, but it was an antique, probably meant to evoke that old-timey small-town feel for the tourists. Setting the diary down on the counter, he found the right button and the cash register’s drawer popped open like a clown sticking out an oversized tongue. He fished through the change and stacks of bills - none of which meant anything to Daniel in this new world - and found the key to the soda machine. He walked back to the machine, holding the key up, and Lisa looked much like the wolf did when Daniel threw the canine a piece of his energy bar. He unlocked the soda machine and pulled out one of the cans, handing it to Lisa. She popped it open and took a sip, then wiped her mouth clean and smiled up at Daniel.
“You’re right. Piss warm. Still, thank you.” She smiled up at Daniel, then blushed and looked away. She took a gulp from the can, then gestured to the clothing racks. “And there’s clean clothes here. We can get you a better coat.”
“You’re right,” he said, feeling the cold in the store. “Maybe some long underwear too.”
Daniel walked over to the circular rack of male clothes and started reading the sizes in the dim light. Lisa went to the nearby rack of women’s clothes and did the same. Daniel picked out some warm clothes his size, then looked around to see where he was going to change when he saw Lisa starting to strip. She was on the other side of the woman’s clothing rack, so Daniel could only see her bare shoulders, but he turned away anyway. He shrugged his shoulders and, safe behind his own rack of clothes, started to strip as well.
“Did you learn anything more from your girlfriend’s diary?” Lisa asked.
“It’s pretty dull up until her father dies,” he said, pulling his new pants on. “Then it gets kind of weird.”
“Weird how?” Lisa asked.
“She starts talking about being tormented by shadows . . .” he began to say.
“Shadows?” Lisa asked, cutting him off. Daniel looked over to see her in mid-dress, frozen as she was buttoning up her new shirt.
“Yeah, she said she could hear them breathing,” he said.
“Or whispering,” Lisa said, then remembered where she was and finished buttoning her shirt.
Daniel stepped out from behind the rack, pulling on a new coat, the tags dangling from the cuff. “It happened here too, didn’t it?”
Lisa stepped out from where she was dressing. “Daniel, what happened to her? To your girlfriend?”
“She killed herself,” he said. “She was in a mental hospital.”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thanks,” Daniel said. “I didn’t even know until after. We hadn’t spoken in years. You look good, by the way.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Clean clothes helped a lot, though they were both covered in wiped-off dried blood. Still, when she wasn’t swinging a knife at him or shooting at him, she was quite attractive. Lisa stepped close to him.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t found me,” she said. “I was going crazy in that apartment all alone,”
Daniel placed his hands on her shoulders. “This is any better? I keep getting you almost killed every five minutes.”
“I’m scared, Daniel, I’m really fucking scared. But before I was scared and alone.” She stepped a little closer, looking up into Daniel’s eyes. “At least I’m not alone anymore.”
“Lisa, I . . .” Daniel started to protest, but when Lisa leaned in to kiss him, he didn’t push her back. Her lips were almost to his when the wolf let out a low woof. They froze as if caught, and both looked at the wolf, who sat there and stared at them both.
Lisa took a step back. “I don’t think that wolf likes me.”
Daniel looked at the wolf, then back to Lisa. He shrugged. “It hasn’t tried to bite you or anything.”
Lisa walked to the counter in a long arc, maximizing the distance between herself and the wolf. The wolf made no moves but sat still and watched Lisa until she was beyond where the wolf could turn her neck.
Lisa pointed to the wolf. “That’s one jealous bitch.”
Lisa walked behind the counter and started rummaging, searching for more supplies. The wolf looked back to Daniel and cocked its head to one side. He smirked at the wolf and said, “You be nice to her.”
The wolf lay on the floor, looking up at Daniel and giving a very canine impression of being admonished. Daniel walked over and knelt in front of the wolf. “Lisa’s right, though. No wild animal would just follow us. You have an owner or something? You been around humans before?”
The wolf didn’t answer. It looked up at Daniel with wide eyes, and for a moment he could forget this was not a domesticated animal.
“What are you?” he asked.
“You expecting that mutt to answer you?” Lisa asked. He almost forgot Lisa was still there.
Daniel looked up to Lisa. “Stranger things have happened lately.”
“It has been a strange day for all of us, Mr. Burns,” came a voice from the ceiling.
Daniel had heard that voice before, and like the last time, it was electronic. The light just reached the ceiling, and Daniel could make out the speakers above him. The store had some public-address system, and the voice of the man in the business suit, the one from the tablet, crackled from the speakers. Daniel rushed to where the propane lamps glowed and grabbed a shotgun. He threw it to Lisa who caught it, then Daniel picked up one for himself. Lisa looked around with wild eyes, aiming the shotgun at every dark spot in the store.
“Who is that?” she cried. “Who the fuck is that?”
Daniel stared up to the intercom speaker. “Where’s Bethany?”
“Mr. Burns, you have a friend! I’m impressed!” the business suit man said in a mocking tone. “Where in the world did you find her?”
He was watching them. There had to be a camera somewhere. Daniel searched the ceiling for it. “Where are you? Where’s my daughter?”
“Now, now, Mr. Burns, calling her your daughter,” the voice crackled from the speakers. “That’s more of a technicality, isn’t it?”
“What is he talking about?” Lisa said. “Who is that?”
The business suit man continued his taunt, ignoring Lisa. “I mean really, Mr. Burns. You’ve know Bethany for a sum of what? Three days? Is she really your daughter in anything but the biological sense of the word?”
Daniel wanted to shoot the speaker as if the shotgun pellets would travel through the wires and hit the blond asshole. “She’s my daughter, no matter how you define it, and I want her back! Now, where is she?”
“You are putting a lot of value on a daughter who’s a stranger to you,” the business suit man said through the speaker. “The offer still stands, Mr. Burns. Walk away now, and we’ll allow you safe passage out of town.”
“No deal,” Daniel said. He felt Lisa snap her gaze at him, and Daniel knew what the man in the suit was trying to do. It wouldn’t work, not on Daniel. Lisa, however . . .
“I’ll even sweeten the deal,” the speaker said, and Daniel knew what was coming. “You can take your new friend with you. You can both leave.”
“Yes!” Lisa shouted, the shotgun relaxing in her hands. She looked up at the speaker with the same expression she had when Daniel first suggested in the convenience store that they could get out of the town together. “Please, let us . . .”
Daniel cut her off. “I’m not leaving without my daughter!”
Lisa ran to him and grabbed his a
rm, pulling him and his attention to her. The shotgun hung loosely from her other hand, and the barrel banged against Daniel’s leg. “What are you doing? We can leave!” Before Daniel could argue, Lisa looked up to the ceiling and, as if begging to God, shouted, “I’ll go! Please, I’ll leave . . .”
“You’re not the one we care about,” the business suit man said, shutting Lisa up. “Mr. Burns, I’ll offer again. Leave now, and you and your new friend will live long and happy lives outside of Shellington Heights. Really, isn’t a daughter you never knew anyway a small price to pay for two lives?”
“Yes! Yes!” Lisa shouted to the ceiling.
“No!” Daniel wasn’t sure if he was telling the business suit man or Lisa.
Lisa turned to Daniel with desperate, pleading eyes. “Daniel, please . . .”
“I said no! I’m not leaving Bethany!” he shouted to Lisa, then turned up to the ceiling. “I will not abandon my daughter!”
“I have to say I’m disappointed, Mr. Burns.” As the business suit man spoke through the speaker, the wolf growled at the dark corners where the lantern’s lights wouldn’t reach. Over the wolf’s growls, the voice over the speaker continued. “I can honestly say, however, that you won’t regret your decision, but only because I don’t think you’ll be living much longer.”
From the corners came a rustling noise. The wolf backed away from the darkness, growling at the things unseen but not unheard. The racks of clothing moved as something crawled under them.
“Quick, up on the counter!” he shouted. He climbed up onto the counter, then helped Lisa climb up with him. Once on the counter, Lisa pulled away from him.
“We could have left, Daniel!” she screamed, nearly in hysterics.
“Not now,” Daniel said, readying the shotgun. He tried aiming the shotgun at the noise, but now the noise was coming from everywhere.
“We could have fucking left!” Lisa shouted. Before Daniel could reply, Lisa swung her own shotgun around. “Shit, they’re coming from over here!”
She aimed at the hallway that led to the back room, the one they entered from. At the edge of the reach of the light, dark forms crawled up the walls and across the ceiling. They were being surrounded, including from above. They were screwed unless Daniel did something and soon. He looked over to the propane lamps, then a desperate plan struck him. He jumped down from the counter.
“Cover me!” he told Lisa.
“What?” Lisa asked.
He shouted as he ran to the small propane tanks. “Watch me, shoot anything that comes near me!”
Getting to the lamps, he grabbed the waterproof matches he used to light them. He grabbed his backpack and threw it through the air and over the counter, safely out of the way, because what he had in mind was going to be dangerous. Stupidly dangerous. The first step was to get the matches, and as an afterthought, he got his bag clear. Now he needed an accelerant. Near where the small propane tanks sat, he saw cooking gear, including lighter fluid. He bolted to them when one of the creatures leaped from the shadow at him. It was a featureless blur to Daniel as he swung around and brought the butt of the shotgun down on the creatures back. The monster landed flat on the ground and scrambled back to the shadows. Daniel shot a nasty look at Lisa.
“Lisa!” he yelled. “Cover me, damn it!”
Daniel grabbed the lighter fluid off the shelf. He popped open the top as another abomination leaped at him. Daniel aimed the bottle of lighter fluid at the thing’s face and squeezed, shooting a stream of clear fluid into its eyes. The monster squealed in pain, and Daniel caught a brief glimpse of a child-like face as its misshapen body scrambled back into the darkness. He didn’t have time to think about it. Daniel ran back to the counter, painting an arc around the counter with the lighter fluid, making sure the semicircle on the floor was wide enough to allow for the wolf. Then Daniel tossed the plastic bottle on top of the counter and pulled out a match. Lighting it, he dropped it on the trail of lighter fluid, and a wall of flame spread in front of them. On the other side of the flames, Daniel could see the child-like faces of the abominations crawling on the floor, along the walls, and like spiders on the ceiling. One of the child monsters scurried along the side of the wall, trying to walk over the flames.
“There!” Daniel shouted as he aimed with the shotgun. He fired, and as a chunk of the abomination’s back turned to a dark splatter against the wall, the thing squealed like a newborn baby. Daniel ignored it at aimed at the next one trying to sneak by the wall of flames. As he shot another and it fell to the floor, the flames started licking at the clothes on the racks. Many of the outdoor clothes were fire retardant, but not all, apparently, as the flames grew. The wolf barked at another of those things and Daniel fired at it. The abomination’s head exploded.
“Lisa? Lisa?” he shouted, but Lisa didn’t answer. He spared a look to find her, but she was gone. For a moment, he imagined one of the child monsters dragging her away as it walked along the ceiling, but he didn’t see her above him. He ran around the counter to see Lisa curled in the corner, rocking back and forth, cradling the shotgun like an infant. Daniel fired several more shots, taking out a couple more of the abominations, then as he reloaded he shouted, “Lisa! Snap out of it! I need you!”
Daniel jumped onto the counter and continued firing at the crawling child-faced abominations when he noticed the wolf was gone. He turned to Lisa. “Where’s the wolf?”
Lisa didn’t answer, only continued to rock her own shotgun and mumble to herself. Daniel shouted out for the wolf, hoping it would jump out of the shadows or let out a bark, but there was nothing. The wolf was gone. The fire was spreading. The child-monsters continued to come at Lisa and him, crawling up and over the flames.
29
Charlie Lightfoot leaned his bow and quiver against the side of the dumpster, then bent over and leaned into it. The odor was strong, but compared to the rotting smell of the abominations it was tolerable. Charlie hid in the dumpster when the really big monster was raised at the bank and chased him off. Sitting in the dumpster, the lid closed, he had heard the monster stomp by, stand to look around, and walk back to the bank. Now he was fishing out the scroll case. His necklace dangled in front of him and almost fell off, but he rested the scroll case against it and sandwiched it against his chest as he pulled himself from the dumpster.
He took a moment to look at himself. His jacket was missing, and his once-white dress shirt was stained with dirt, sweat, and blood. There were tears in his slacks and his shoes were scraped. He leaned against the wall and pulled off the expensive shoes, hissing in relief. The shoes dropped to the street with a light slap as Charlie rubbed his feet. Blisters were forming, not counting the ones he had already dressed.
“Mental note,” he said to himself, “next apocalypse, dress for the occasion. Maybe some cross-trainers.”
He leaned back against the wall, enjoying the moment of having the shoes off when a bark rang out from down the street. Charlie was surprised, but not alarmed. The bark wasn’t from an abomination, it didn’t have the wet death-rattle under it. This was a bark from something alive and healthy. Charlie looked for the bark, but from where he stood he could only see the wall. He pulled his shoes back on, grabbed his bow and the scroll case, and stepped out into the street. Standing in the middle of the street was a large gray wolf. This was the first living thing, besides the handful of people still running around the town, he’d seen since the town sunk into this weird dimension. Well, the avatars were alive, he supposed, but this was a natural creature, not one brought to life by the living spirit of living or whatever the hell the avatars were.
Or was it? The wolf stood there looking at him. Then it turned and started walking off, but just before Charlie wrote it off as another oddity in a place where odd was the norm, the wolf stopped and looked over its shoulder, as if to say, “Aren’t you coming?” Charlie’s mind raced with stories his grandfather told him when he was young about animal spirits.
“This . . . This
can’t be real,” he said.
The wolf gave a bark as if to say, “Hurry up, let’s go.”
“Okay, all right. I’m coming,” he said, grabbing his gear. He started walking after the wolf. “Where’s the fire?”
The camping store was turning into an inferno, and Daniel and Lisa were in the middle of it. It was an act of desperation when Daniel created the wall of flame as a barricade, and now Daniel was desperate to get out of the store before choking to death from all the smoke. The fire spread from the clothes and other merchandise to the walls. He could hear the wood beams creaking to hold up the ceiling as they weakened from the flames. The only good thing about the store burning down around them was the flames kept the abominations busy. Like all abominations, they were attracted to the flames, but they also burned like tissue paper. Daniel shot the few stragglers that remembered the humans they were supposed to kill and crawled over the ceiling to get to him and Lisa. Another crack from the shotgun and another abomination fell to the floor and into the flames. Soon, however, he would need to reload, and without covering fire, he’d be vulnerable.
“Lisa!” he shouted. “We need to get out of here! The place is burning down!”
He looked down to the floor behind the counter. Tears streamed from her eyes as she squeezed her shotgun the way Bethany would squeeze her doll. Her eyes were wide, but she wasn’t seeing anything. Lisa curled into herself both physically and mentally.
“Are you listening to me?” Daniel shouted to her. He wasn’t sure he could save himself, let alone both of them if she was going to be a vegetable. “We’re going to die in here if you don’t get off your ass and help me!” Another creature crawled along the wall, and Daniel let out a shot. It went down, squealing in either agony or rapture, it was hard to tell. He turned back to Lisa, keeping one eye on the creatures. “I think they already got the wolf, I can’t find her! We’ve got to get out of here! Lisa?”